December 31, 2002

THESE PHOTOS of Iranian actress Hedieh Tehrani aren't very exciting to Americans. But they're creating a sensation in Iran:

This is because nobody in Iran has ever seen her body or her hair in a film or even in public, for Islamic laws prevent Iranian women to apear in public without covering their body and their hair (thanks God, not their faces though, like many Arab women). Aside from the fact that these photos might result in serious damages to her career as a successful and well-paid actress in the future, they can also reveal the huge gap between the private and public lives and values of Iranian people, which is absolutely an outcome of extreme Islamic rules and religon-derived traditional culture.

I find that gap hopeful. Visit WomeninIran.com, too, and hope that this time next year things there will be better. It certainly will if these women have anything to say about it.